turning a sportbike

I was talking with my buddy a couple nights ago about riding. He says when hes in a turn, he kinda pushes up on the handle bars the direction he is turning instead of just leaning into the turn more. It just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Counter steering is a little confusing to just read or talk about and understand. It's like if you want to make a left turn, you actually steer right while leaning left and looking left. Just look where you want to go, your body follows, and so will your bike.

When you lean a motorcycle, the weight of the vehicle and the forward momentum wants to turn the wheel more and more into the turn so you are forced to actually straighten the front wheel a bit to keep it on track. It's not that you are "steering" in the opposite direction, you are fighting the front wheel from cranking all the way over.
The faster you go, the more this occurs and the more force you need to apply to the bars to keep the front wheel on track.

The term countersteering confuses most new drivers and people tend to make it more complicated than it really is when describing it.

When you lean a motorcycle, the weight of the vehicle and the forward momentum wants to turn the wheel more and more into the turn so you are forced to actually straighten the front wheel a bit to keep it on track. It's not that you are "steering" in the opposite direction, you are fighting the front wheel from cranking all the way over.
The faster you go, the more this occurs and the more force you need to apply to the bars to keep the front wheel on track.

The term countersteering confuses most new drivers and people tend to make it more complicated than it really is when describing it.

when you want to turn left, push the bars to the right. like in a car when turning left, the car naturally wants to remain going straight, therefore it rolls the opposite direction of the left turn, in this case, to the right, i.e. you get thrown to the right when you make a sudden left turn.

bikes do the same thing... if you try turning left by turning the bars left, the bike will lean towards the right due to the same rolling action in the car example. as it leans over towards the right, it'll begin to turn right as it rolls over onto the edge of the tire, which is a smaller diameter and forces the front wheel and bike to fall into that right turn. this is all great... except you were *trying* to turn left.

thus "countersteering" comes into play. it's simply deflecting the front wheel in the opposite direction to divert the bike into the desired direction. increased lean angle allows the bike to turn a tighter radius at speed. want to turn right? push on the right bar. left? push on the left bar. need to lean further to clear the turn? push more on the side of the bar you are currently leaning/turning into. need to straighten up? hit the throttle or push on the opposing bar; right hand turn, push on left bar to straighten up/out.

hanging off doesnt make the bike lean more. in actuality, it makes you lean the bike less.

the way this was explained to me was this. Imagine the bike standing upright by itself. Now, if you turn the handlebars slightly to the right, which way does the bike want to fall? Now turn them to the left, which way will the bike want to fall then?

When you lean a motorcycle, the weight of the vehicle and the forward momentum wants to turn the wheel more and more into the turn so you are forced to actually straighten the front wheel a bit to keep it on track. It's not that you are "steering" in the opposite direction, you are fighting the front wheel from cranking all the way over.
The faster you go, the more this occurs and the more force you need to apply to the bars to keep the front wheel on track.

The term countersteering confuses most new drivers and people tend to make it more complicated than it really is when describing it.

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Finally someone who can explain the concept concisely. I always thought countersteering had something to do with gyroscopic deflection of force, but what you're saying makes much more sense -- the bike wants to curl itself into a little tiny ball, so the rider has to force the front wheel to maintain a consistent turning radius.

All everybody else is talking about is what happens if you turn the handlebars without leaning into the corner -- which is the same thing that happens to little kids when they get their training wheels taken off for the first time.

the bike wants to curl itself into a little tiny ball, so the rider has to force the front wheel to maintain a consistent turning radius.

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wrong. rolling onto the outer edge of the tire reduces the wheel's overall diameter, causing the vehicle to slow down. THIS is what causes the bike to want to "fall over in the corner".

this is why we use what's called "maintenance throttle"... to maintain the speed of the cycle during a loss of velocity due to reduced wheel diameter while turning... otherwise you will fall over due to decreasing speed and loss of gyroscopic effect. "maintenance throttle" is the application of throttle during a turn to maintain velocity by way of increasing wheel speed.

Sorry, guess the 34 years I've been riding is far outweighed by your experience.

I simplified it because there's no need to give an advanced trig class on the actual forces involved in order to sound like an intellectual. Make it short and simple and the basics are easier to grasp.

the way this was explained to me was this. Imagine the bike standing upright by itself. Now, if you turn the handlebars slightly to the right, which way does the bike want to fall? Now turn them to the left, which way will the bike want to fall then?

wrong. rolling onto the outer edge of the tire reduces the wheel's overall diameter, causing the vehicle to slow down. THIS is what causes the bike to want to "fall over in the corner".

this is why we use what's called "maintenance throttle"... to maintain the speed of the cycle during a loss of velocity due to reduced wheel diameter while turning... otherwise you will fall over due to decreasing speed and loss of gyroscopic effect. "maintenance throttle" is the application of throttle during a turn to maintain velocity by way of increasing wheel speed.

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Wait, that doesn't make sense. The gyroscopic stability is dependent on wheel RPMs, which (in an ideal world) stay the same even if the bike is leaning onto a part of the tire that has a smaller outer diameter. I understand how the bike would slow down as a result, but the gyroscopic effect should actually INCREASE as a result of the bike's inertia forcing the wheels to spin faster as the tire diameter decreases.

You'll excuse me for making what seems like a laughable comparison, but I've exceeded 50mph on my mountain bike before and I've never needed to countersteer -- or at least, if I did, I wasn't aware I was doing it. All I've ever done is turn the front wheel into the corner a little bit while at the same time leaning into the corner, and then if I needed to turn harder, I just leaned more while keeping the front wheel in the same slightly-turned position. I do know that if I took my hands off the handlebar in a corner, the front wheel would turn into the corner so sharply that it would very nearly spin around backwards. Is the act of preventing the front wheel from trying to turn more, what you call "countersteering"?

That's what it is. No need to make it any more complicated than it is for the average rider.

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Oh, okay. I guess it's just more noticeable on a motorcycle because the whole thing weighs 15x as much as my mountain bike does.

See, I think the term "countersteering" does the concept an injustice by making it sound like something it isn't. What the word "countersteering" conjures up in my mind is that I'm somehow, for some reason, supposed to force the front wheel to point left if I want to turn right, or point right if I want to turn left -- I don't mean applying pressure, I mean actually making the wheel point in the wrong direction, as though I were powersliding the bike. That's one of the biggest reasons I never got a motorcycle (the other being that I'd never get any exercise ever again), because I couldn't bring myself to attempt to do what my instincts insisted would result in severe injury. It's good to know I was right.

So, can it be safely said that to corner a motorcycle, you have to resist the front wheel's tendency to point too sharply into the corner, but you don't actually steer the front wheel in the wrong direction?